Science Tuesday: How to get your daily dose of vitamin D

There’s something about the warmth caressing your face and the light that makes everything seem clearer. After a long winter it’s something we start to crave in New England and as summer approaches most people have gotten a head start on the summer clothes despite the fact that the warmest it’s been is in the high 50s.

To the girls wearing spring dresses and the guys wearing pink shorts and polos: we’re not there yet. But when we are, one the best ways to take advantage of the sun is to lie out on the grass (and soon enough it’ll look like a herd of seals took over the COM lawn).

Until it’s actually warm out, I’ve been taking vitamin D supplements every so often, along with fish oil (which apparently is great for you, however it makes my burps taste fishy). As for taking vitamin D, I’ve heard it can do wonders for helping my bones — and according to WebMD it also helps with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, skin diseases and asthma.

So I started taking vitamin D for several reasons on top of the fact that I’m tired of pulling out my asthmatic inhaler and being on Steve Urkel’s level (and I ain’t ready for that).

According to a study published last week in British Medical Journal, researchers evaluated the biases that are associated with the miraculous vitamin and found that it came short of many of our expectations. First, they tackled over 260 previous studies and papers. According to their findings, only ten of the studies lived up to the researchers standards.

According to Discover Magazine, earlier research claimed that vitamin D prevented over 137 conditions like osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, and only one study suggested that vitamin D levels in a mother’s third trimester correlated with birth weight. Other studies claimed that it was possible that vitamin D could be linked to childhood cavities and hormone levels of dialysis patients, but none of the evidence in these previous studies established actual proof.

So is it better to just take vitamin D in the hopes that it’s “good for you”?

The thing is, vitamin D deficiency is a probability and it is more common than you expect, especially for people living in the north (and even people like me who grew up in warm climates could have it too). It’s probably because we stay indoors a lot for fear of getting burned. So if you’ve become a skeptic, there are ways to get enough vitamin D, and hopefully not burn yourself to a crisp while doing it!